Phone Link not showing Contact Names....again

I really hate to add to the white noise on this thread, even though I have the same issues in one form or another. Nevertheless, I'd like to add to my objective experience notes without adding the emotions.

I will only address the Outlook/Windows/PhoneLink use case. Duplicate contacts in outlook (and probably other clients) can be removed very easily and quickly by exporting the entire contact folder to a pst or csv file; delete the contact list and folders entirely from Outlook; import the data you just exported using the "do not import duplicate" option. Bob's your uncle. Worked for me quickly with 10K+ items that once appeared.

PhoneLink produces a category in my outlook contact list that shows up as a folder. Very frustrating since it seems like it should be hidden from the user. After importing the old contact list, that phonelink folder may appear when PhoneLink syncs. Delete it. MS claims that the purpose of this folder is to allow you to segregate contact info in Outlook from what is in PhoneLink. Over time it will reappear.

If you have contact list troubles on your phone, just sync things with outlook (actually exchange) and delete the contact list entries. In time PhoneList will recreate the database from the exchange.

In the past I have deleted the contacts from my phone entirely, disconnected it, and reconnected it as part of this purge. I decided that these steps are ok but aren't needed always.

One of the problems that probably cause the recurrent issues is that MS has redefined what a category is between old Outlook, new Outlook, and versions of PhoneLink. Not being an anthropologist or psychologist, I don't understand why. It doesn't matter. Right now I only have phonelink problems when something else diddles with the exchange database, like if I merged old info into new, and such. But getting over that hump, PhoneLink and Outlook work very well for me in general.

Thank you for this. I'm in the middle of that cleanup process myself and hope it works!

I was the same, a daily user on the app and then suddenly one day it was hit n' miss as to whether or not my contact was appearing instead on their numbers. Really annoying! And definitely an update issue because it was working for ages, just fine.

Having had this problem with Phone Linka year ago and having solved the problem by cleaning up my phone records, I believe the primary issue here is a data issue. My phone contact data had been corrupted and had many duplicates across several contact databases including Office365 Exchange, google, and Samsung phone. After cleaning these databases and removing conflicts, this app started working again and has since worked reliably and repeatably.

My database was around 2500 contacts and after the duplication caused by a conflict between Microsoft and Samsung had over 20,000 contacts, mostly duplicates. Cleaning the corrupted contacts and consolidating to a single exchange database fixed the problem.

Note: I did not set out to fix the Phone Link issue although repairing the databases did resolve the Phone Link issue. I took me nearly 6 months to perform the cleanup since the duplication was not predictable and left many partial contact records forcing an almost entirely manual solution.

This gives me such anxiety. I hate how the problem comes and goes. I haven't changed a thing in the last few months except for running the updates on my phone and Windows 11 updates. So far, it has not broken my Contacts yet, but hearing that others are still having the problem tells me it is not fixed completely. I will enjoy it for now while it is working as it should.

Barbara